Chapter 778: Chapter 528: Racking One’s Brain
The shipyard was repairing ships, while the banks were mending roads and reinforcing the embankment.
This year’s 11th typhoon disaster in August caused enormous losses to the coastal provinces.
According to incomplete statistics, during the 11th typhoon, Zhehai Province reported 169 deaths by drowning, 776 kilometers of damaged embankments, 13,894 breaches in the embankment, 830,000 mu of farmland flooded by seawater, 11.41 million people affected by the disaster, and around 2.27 million residents trapped by floodwaters and sea, with direct economic losses of about 19.3 billion yuan!
Jianfu Province, located south of the 11th typhoon’s landfall point, had most of its coastal areas within the typhoon’s radius, with local tide levels generally exceeding the warning levels. The fierce tide and violent wind and waves damaged 29 seawalls, resulting in 25 breaches, flooding 350,000 mu of farmland with seawater, and causing direct economic losses of about 2 billion yuan!
In Jiangnan Province, under the joint attack of strong winds, torrential rains, and tidal waves, the economic losses were also very severe.
Nearly all coastal and inland river monitoring stations were above the warning levels, with significant damage to the Jianghai embankments. A total of 28,000 collapsed houses, 10 dead, 10 missing, and over 200,000 people trapped by water at one point, with 120,000 urgently evacuated, and direct economic losses of about 3 billion yuan!
Typhoon 11 passed west of the East Sea, and although it did not cause any major emergencies, on the evening of August 18, the water level of the Huangpu River broke the historical record of 5.22 meters, reaching 5.72 meters, and Wusong Station reached 5.99 meters, an event that happens once in 300 years.
Over a dozen kilometers of exterior seawalls in East Sea City were damaged and more than 10 kilometers of river embankments were overflowed, resulting in 7 deaths and economic losses of about 600 million yuan.
Dongshan, Beihai, and other coastal provinces also suffered varying degrees of economic loss.
Better late than never to mend the fold after the sheep are gone.
Linghai suffered heavy losses this year, and we cannot afford such a calamity again. With the support of both provincial and municipal governments, laborers from all towns and villages are required to repair the Jianghai embankments during this period. The residents who live farthest from the riverbank have to ride a bicycle for more than an hour to come here to "pick and shovel" (dig and carry soil).
Many residents live too far from home, making it inconvenient to commute to and from work. The leading cadres at the township and village levels communicate and coordinate with responsible persons from various riverside townships. They either bunk on the floor in nearby schools or live in village offices by the river. Some people who work in river engineering even stay in the homes of people living under the embankments.
They not only have to bring their own shovels, carrying poles, spiked harrows, and baskets for road and embankment repairs, but they also have to bring their own rice, pickles, and oil, fully as "volunteer work", returning home after half a month without pay.
For those labor forces who do business or work elsewhere, they are not required to come back for the embankment repair but must contribute financially, paying someone else to do the work at a set rate per worker.
On the embankment and the fields where soil was being taken, one can see slogans everywhere promoting water conservancy and defending the homeland. The reinforcement of the Jianghai embankments is indeed to prevent everyone from suffering disasters again, but not all of the nearly one million residents in Linghai are farmers.
The townspeople don’t need to work on the river embankments, aren’t they afraid of getting flooded?
Despite repeated emphasis by officials that government office workers and employees of institutions have donated money, mostly deducted directly from their salaries, many residents still complained, grumbling that farmers working in the fields have always had the hardest life, no matter the era.
In short, where there are more people, there are more issues.
According to the deployment of superiors, Shi Shengyong organized the local police and the Cooperative Defense Team to maintain order on the embankment.
The security of the shipyard was equally important. Considering the large number of people nearby "picking and shoveling," Boss Wang and Boss Wu urgently built a ring of color steel tile walls around the shipyard under the request of the Management Committee.
After all, foreign vessels were being repaired inside the shipyard, and nobody was allowed to enter without permission from Border Inspection.
Furthermore, with a lot of steel and electric wires at the shipyard construction site, if someone sneaked in to steal, and the foreign sailors found out, it would be a bad influence.
Taking the opportunity to strengthen security measures, Han Yu re-planned the work area and organized the Linghai Port Enterprise Fire Brigade, the Linghai Fire Brigade, and the border inspection station’s guard squad to build three security checkpoints using local materials.
One for construction workers entering and exiting the shipyard, one for foreign sailors, and another for engineering vehicles.
The Armed Police major in charge at the border inspection station was surnamed Li, named Li Jun.
Li Jun knew Han Yu as early as when Han Yu used a high-pressure water cannon to clean the windows of a foreign vessel that had illegally entered the Yangtze River.
Since the border inspection station only had two small motorboats that could not withstand strong winds and waves, they could only execute guard duties within the waters of Binjiang Port. In recent years, whenever there was a foreign vessel anchored at the inspection anchorage or the sea anchorage, the station leader would request assistance from Han Yu’s 001.
For these reasons, Li Jun has boarded 001 more than once and is very familiar with Captain Fan, Zhu Baogen, Ma Jintao, Yang Yong, and others.
In September this year, he even led a team to participate in military-civilian flood prevention and rescue skills training organized by the city.
The workers who had to repair ships have boarded them, and the workers from the bottom of the dry dock and the temporary help from the embankment construction site have also gone down; it was not very busy at this moment.
Looking down at the bottom of the dry dock, Li Jun suddenly said, "Salted Fish, I might be leaving the service next year."
"Brother Li, how many years have you been a major?"
"Three years."
"Why are you in such a hurry to leave the service? It would be great to be promoted to lieutenant colonel after a few more years."
"Becoming a lieutenant colonel isn’t as easy as you say."
Han Yu turned back and asked, "Is it very difficult?"
Li Jun chuckled bitterly, "As difficult as ascending to heaven."
Like the civilian sector, the military is also structured like a pyramid; the higher you go, the harder it is, after all, the fewer the positions are at the top.
After a moment of silence, Han Yu asked, "Brother Li, do you plan to return to your hometown, or transfer locally?"
